


The Little Room

by Sheffield



Series: Dark!Gregor [1]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Dark!Gregor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 12:26:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheffield/pseuds/Sheffield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes... Gregor wonders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Room

The Residence is old - not just old, time of isolation old. And Gregor has had time - years; years upon years - to learn all its secrets.

But the little room behind the dressing room, along the corridor from the breakfast parlour? That one had only come to light when they were remodelling the wing to give him a bathroom that wasn’t out of the time of isolation, one that had actual water pressure *all the time*. And in between knocking down this wall and moving these pipes, well, it had turned out there was a little room, the kind they called a “priest’s hole”, at the back of the emperor’s own dressing room.

He had requested and required the builders to wall it up quietly and then had requested and required Illyan to use different builders for the rest of the project and to make sure the room didn’t turn up on any plans.

It hadn’t been difficult, actually.

He’d sold it to Illyan as a panic room, a last retreat, along the lines of the infamous tunnels in the walls through which Cordelia and Bothari and Droushnakovi had escaped with Miles and his replicator in the middle of the Vordarian revolt.

Only this was just a room.

Oh, Illyan had seen it when there had been a floor that opened up and led to an ancient step ladder that led into the same sewer system, but he didn’t know that Gregor had had the builders close off the trap door and ... seal the room.

It wasn’t an escape hatch, not any more.

It was a little room, about four foot by four foot by six foot high. There were five holes which Gregor had, personally, drilled into the back of his dressing room and plugged with wine corks painted to be virtually invisible. If you were outside the room, you could see in. If you were inside the room, you could get air through the holes, if someone outside unplugged them.

It wasn’t a big thing. It was just... there.

Sometimes, late at night, the Emperor of Barrayar would lie alone in his big bed and think about the little room. About - just as a thought experiment - what it would be like to lock someone in that little room. And a frisson would go through his arms and legs and belly and... and he would wonder.

Not “whether”. Just “when”.


End file.
